Netaji’s ‘Great Escape’ car to be restored

Kolkata, Sep 6 (IANS) Seventy-five years after it ferried Indian revolutionary Netaji Subash Chandra Bose during the first leg of his ‘Great Escape’ from British India, wheels have been set in motion for restoration of the iconic four-door German Wanderer sedan parked at his ancestral home here.

Housed in a glass enclosure on the ground floor of the Netaji Bhawan, which is owned and managed by the Netaji Research Bureau (NRB), the sedan will receive a fresh lease of life, courtesy a collaboration between the Bureau and German auto maker Audi.

“Work is going on. All its components will be repaired and restored to what it was in its original form,” NRB chairperson Krishna Bose told IANS.

The restoration of the 1937-make sedan is being carried out in consultation with vintage car expert Pallab Ray and is scheduled for completion by December.

Under house arrest, Bose escaped from the house in Elgin Road in south Kolkata (then Calcutta) on the night of January 16, 1941, in the Wanderer W24, in the first leg of his escape to then Nazi Germany.

His nephew Sisir Bose drove him in the car (bearing the registration number BLA 7169) through the streets of Kolkata to Gomoh (now in Jharkhand) hoodwinking British intelligence. Netaji subsequently crossed over into Afghanistan and reached Germany via Kabul and Moscow.